VIENNA — Austria will toughen its gun legal guidelines, its chancellor mentioned Monday, after a 21-year-old former student killed 9 college students and a instructor at his faculty final week in what’s thought-about the Alpine nation’s deadliest post-war assault.
The taking pictures had sparked a debate about Austria’s gun legal guidelines, that are among the many extra liberal within the European Union. The assailant in Graz used a shotgun and a pistol which he owned legally, police mentioned shortly after the assault.
“Entry to weapons should be regulated much more responsibly in Austria,” Christian Stocker mentioned throughout a speech in Parliament in Vienna.
The brand new legal guidelines will embrace “stricter eligibility necessities for gun possession and restrictions for sure danger teams,” the chancellor mentioned, including that data-sharing between the totally different authorities can be improved as nicely.
“Sooner or later, wherever a person danger state of affairs is recognized, penalties underneath firearms legislation should be drawn routinely,” Stocker mentioned.
The chancellor mentioned his Cupboard would move the brand new measures later this week however did not give any additional particulars.
Nevertheless, on Saturday, Stocker advised public broadcaster ORF that toughening the legal guidelines may embrace elevating the minimal age for gun patrons.
Within the faculty taking pictures Tuesday on the BORG Dreierschützengasse highschool in Graz, 9 college students had been killed — six girls and three boys aged between 14 and 17 — in addition to a instructor. Another 11 people were wounded. The attacker killed himself in a toilet of his former faculty.
Historically, many in Austria maintain weapons, which they typically use to go looking within the Alpine nation’s huge forests. Typically, it’s extra widespread to hold a weapon for that and fewer for self-defense.
In response to the Small Arms Survey, Austria ranks twelfth on this planet in terms of holding civilian firearms, with 30 firearms per 100 residents. That’s far lower than within the U.S. which tops the rating with 120 firearms per 100 residents, however greater than Austria’s neighbor Germany, which ranked twenty third with 19 firearms per 100 residents.
In Austria, some weapons, resembling rifles and shotguns that should be reloaded manually after every shot, may be bought from the age of 18 with no allow. Gun sellers solely must test if there’s no weapons ban on the client, and the weapon is added to the central weapons register.
Different weapons, resembling repeating shotguns or semi-automatic firearms, are tougher to accumulate. Patrons want a gun possession card and a firearms move.
Austria Press Company has reported that the suspect had a gun possession card, however this doc merely entitles a holder to accumulate and possess, however to not carry weapons such because the handgun. That weapon additionally would have required a firearm move.
In his speech on Monday, the chancellor additionally introduced that every one colleges within the nation would get extra long-term psychological support for students and that police would improve their presence in entrance of faculties till the tip of the college 12 months this summer time.
As well as, Stocker mentioned, the federal government will create a compensation fund “that may make it doable to help the affected families quickly and unbureaucratically — for instance with funeral prices, psychological care or different urgently wanted assist companies.”
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Grieshaber reported from Berlin.